行業內魚龍混雜 揭露詐騙的風險幾何

It can be very risky to do things in China that are taken for granted in other countries.

在中國，有些在其他國家被認爲理所應當的事情可能也會非常危險。

Kun Huang, a Chinese-born Canadian citizen, is back in Vancouver after spending two years in a Chinese jail. His crime was contributing to research that led his employer to recommend short sales of Silvercorp Metals, a silver producer that is based in Canada but does its mining in China.

出生於中國的加拿大公民黃昆在中國服刑兩年後回到溫哥華。他的罪名是參與了一項調查，促使他的僱主建議賣空希爾威金屬礦業(Silvercorp Metals)。希爾威金屬礦業是一個設在加拿大的銀礦生產商，但採礦是在中國進行的。

Huang, now 37, returned to his native China in 2006 after graduating from the University of British Columbia with a degree in commerce. His parents immigrated to Vancouver in 1997, when he was 20 years old, and he became a Canadian citizen in 2002.

2006年，現年37歲的黃昆從不列顛哥倫比亞大學(University of British Columbia)畢業後，拿着一個商業學位回到中國。1997年，他的父母移民來到溫哥華，他當時20歲；2002年他成了一位加拿大公民。

His job was to research Chinese companies, which were beginning to list on stock markets in the United States and Canada. He had been hired by Eos, a hedge fund run by Jon Carnes, a Canadian money manager, to “go through all the financial records in Chinese, talk to management and customers and suppliers,” he said in an interview.

他的工作就是研究正開始在美國和加拿大的股票市場上市的中國公司。他在採訪中說，他曾受聘於Eos——加拿大資金經理人約翰·卡恩斯(Jon Carnes)運營的一家對衝基金，工作內容是“檢查中國所有的財務記錄，與管理層、顧客以及供應商交流。”

At first, Eos looked for good stocks to buy, but Carnes eventually gained a reputation for spotting Chinese frauds, which he publicized online under the name Alfred Little.

開始，Eos是找一些好股票購買，但卡恩斯最後卻以發現中國的欺詐現象而聞名，他後來以阿爾弗萊德·利特爾(Alfred Little)爲名把他的發現公佈到了網上。

Huang had worked on some of those reports but had no run-ins with the Chinese authorities until 2011. In June of that year, he was asked to look into Silvercorp. He said he found that some Silvercorp reports to the Chinese government showed its mines were not doing as well as they were in reports that the company issued in Canada.

黃昆一直在研究其中的一些報告，但是直到2011年以前，從未與中國官方發生衝突。當年6月，他受託對希爾威進行調查。他說他發現在希爾威交給中國政府的一些報告中，公司的表現不如在加拿大發布的報告中好。

He sent associates to the Ying Mine, Silvercorp's largest operation, in Henan province, about 500 miles southwest of Beijing. They filmed trucks leaving the mine with ore and picked up samples of the ore that fell off trucks.

他讓同事前往位於北京西南方向約500英里（約合800公里）的河南省的月亮溝鉛鋅銀礦，這裏是希爾威最大的一個項目。他們拍攝了載着礦石離開礦區的卡車，還撿了一些從車上掉下來的礦石樣本。

In September, an Alfred Little report questioned whether Silvercorp had exaggerated the mine's production. It said the samples it had picked up had substantially less silver in each ton of rock than the company claimed and that the volume of truck traffic was too light to account for all the ore Silvercorp said it had mined.

9月，阿爾弗萊德·利特爾的一篇報告質疑希爾威是否誇大了礦區的產出。報告稱，從他們撿回的礦石樣本來看，每噸礦石的含銀量要比公司所說的少很多，卡車運輸礦石的數量太少，根本達不到希爾威所說的規模。

The company responded indignantly and demanded investigations into those who had attacked it.

公司對此做了憤怒的迴應，並要求對那些攻擊公司的人進行調查。

Huang was arrested on Dec. 28 when he tried to fly to Hong Kong from Beijing. A police officer from Luoyang, the city closest to the mine, warned him that if he did not cooperate he could spend four or five years in jail. The officers questioning him took frequent calls — Huang says he believes they were from Silvercorp officials — and then demanded such information as “the password to the Eos mail server.”

12月28日，黃昆在打算從北京飛往香港時被捕。來自靠近礦區的城市洛陽的一名警察警告黃昆，如果不合作，他可能會被關四到五年。對他進行質詢的警察接了很多個電話——黃昆說他認爲這些電話都是希爾威的管理人員打來的——隨後還要求他提供“Eos郵箱服務器密碼”等信息。

Within a few days, Huang was released on bail, prohibited from leaving China. But that status ended abruptly in July 2012 after a column I wrote for The New York Times appeared, quoting Carnes as saying the Luoyang police “arrested, terrorized and forbid my researchers from communicating with me or performing any further research on Chinese companies.”

數日之後，黃昆獲得保釋，但是被禁止離開中國。不過，2012年7月我爲《紐約時報》寫的一篇專欄文章發表後，情況突然發生改變。文章援引卡恩斯的話說，洛陽警察“逮捕、恐嚇我的研究人員，並禁止他們與我聯絡或對中國公司展開進一步調查。”

Huang was rearrested, he told me, with police officers making clear that action was “directly in retaliation” for the column. He spent the next two years in the Luoyang detention center, in a 300-square-foot cell that held as many as 34 other prisoners, according to a lawsuit Huang filed this month against Silvercorp in Vancouver.

他告訴我，黃昆再次被捕，警察這次明確表示這種舉動是對那篇文章的“直接報復”。根據黃昆本月在溫哥華對希爾威提起的訴訟，他隨後在洛陽監獄度過了接下來的兩年，與多達34名其他囚犯一起被關在一個300平方英尺（約合30平方米）的牢房裏。

In September, The Globe and Mail of Toronto published a long article on Huang and Silvercorp, including statements Huang had made during an interview while he was out on bail. That made the police even angrier, Huang said in his lawsuit. He was required, according to the suit, “to scrub the sick bay using his bare hands.”

9月，多倫多《環球郵報》(The Globe and Mail)發表了一篇關於黃昆和希爾威的長文，其中包括黃昆在保釋期間接受採訪時所做的聲明。黃昆在訴訟文件中稱，這進一步激怒了警方。文件稱，他被要求“徒手擦洗醫務室”。

Huang told me the Luoyang detention center “is the most unbearable imprisonment in China.” He has not seen most Chinese jails, of course, but he said it was much worse than the Beijing detention center, the other one he has seen.

黃昆告訴我，洛陽的監獄“是中國最令人難以忍受的監獄”。當然，他也沒有見過中國的大多數監獄，不過他說這裏比北京監獄糟糕很多——他也在那裏待過。

Finally, in June 2013, he was charged with criminal behavior and convicted in a one-day private trial in September. He was fined 500,000 renminbi, about $80,000, and sentenced to two years in prison. He was given credit for the time he was jailed after his second arrest and was released and deported in July.

最後，到了2013年6月，他被指控有犯罪行爲，並且在9月一次持續了一天的不公開審判中被定罪。他被罰款50萬元人民幣，並被判刑兩年。他在第二次被捕後被拘留的時間也計入服刑時間。今年7月，他被釋放並驅逐出境。

What was his crime? An appeals court decision that rejected his appeal said he committed “the crime of impairing business credibility and product reputation,” according to a translation of the decision provided to me by Silvercorp. He was acquitted of the second charge, that of illegal use of spy equipment — the cameras that filmed the trucks leaving the mine. He had not been the one who bought the cameras or did the filming. Nor had he written the reports, although he did provide information for them.

他犯了什麼罪？一家上訴法院駁回了他的上訴。希爾威提供給我的那份裁決的翻譯版本顯示，他犯了“損害商業信譽、商品聲譽罪”。對他的第二項指控是非法使用監控設備——拍攝卡車離開礦場的攝像機——但被判罪名不成立。攝像機既不是他買的，也不是他在拍攝。撰寫報告的也不是他，儘管他提供了信息。

The appeals court ruling sounds as if simply selling stocks short is a crime under Chinese law. “This court has determined that Huang Kun clearly knew that the purpose of gaining production information and pictures of the said Chinese enterprises, as requested by Carnes, was to short the stocks,” the judges wrote.

上訴法院的裁決聽上去似乎是說，按照中國的法律，僅僅是賣空股票也是一種犯罪。“本院判定，黃昆清楚地知道，卡恩斯獲取產品信息和前述中國企業的照片的目的是做空相關股票，”法官寫道。

Silvercorp's efforts to sue people involved in the reports in Canada and the United States have not been fruitful, but last December the British Columbia Securities Commission did file fraud charges against Carnes, saying that he published his original report in part because put options he had purchased on Silvercorp were about to expire.

在加拿大和美國，希爾威試圖起訴參與了相關報告的人，但未獲成功，然而去年12月不列顛哥倫比亞證券委員會(British Columbia Securities Commission)對卡恩斯提起欺詐指控，稱他發表第一篇報告在一定程度上是因爲購買的希爾威看跌期權即將到期。

It said he made millions of dollars on those options as a result of the report. Carnes denied the allegations, and a hearing is scheduled for this year.

該委員會稱，因爲該報告，他通過那些期權大賺數百萬美元。卡恩斯否認了相關指控，圍繞此事的聽證會定於今年舉行。

A Silvercorp official declined to discuss the cases with me, and the police in Luoyang did not respond to calls and faxes seeking comment.

希爾威的一名官員拒絕和我討論相關案件，洛陽警方也未回覆我請其置評的電話和傳真。

Meanwhile, business has declined at Silvercorp. Last year it said there was fraud at the Ying Mine, committed by contract miners who were paid by the ton of rocks they dug out. The company said the miners had mixed in refuse to get paid more.

與此同時，希爾威業務下跌。去年，該公司稱月亮溝鉛鋅銀礦出現了欺詐行爲。欺詐方是按挖出的石頭噸數計酬的礦工。希爾威稱，爲了獲得更高的報酬，那些礦工摻加了廢料。

The amount of silver produced by Silvercorp fell from 5.6 million ounces in fiscal 2012, which ended in March, to 4.9 million ounces in 2013 and 3.85 million ounces in 2014, according to Chris Thompson, an analyst at Raymond James in Canada. He said production of lead, zinc and gold also declined.

加拿大雷蒙德·詹姆斯公司(Raymond James)的分析師克里斯·湯普森(Chris Thompson)表示，希爾威的銀產量從3月結束的2012財年的560萬盎司，跌至2013財年的490萬盎司和2014財年的385萬盎司。他說該公司的鉛、鋅和金的產量也下降了。

But the company said this month that results improved in the first quarter of fiscal 2015, which ended in June, although silver sales were lower than they were in the period a year earlier.

但希爾威本月表示，在6月結束的2015財年第一季度，公司業績有所改善，不過銀銷量依然低於去年同期。

The company's stock price, which peaked at $15 in April 2011, was below $8 when the first report from Carnes was released. Now it is about $1.85. Part of that decline was caused by falling silver prices, but Silvercorp shares have underperformed those of other silver producers.

2011年4月，希爾威的股價創下15美元的最高水平。到卡恩斯公佈第一份報告時，該公司股價不足8美元。如今，公司股價約爲1.85美元。股價下跌部分是因爲銀價持續走低，但希爾威的股票表現不如其他白銀生產商的股票。

Huang is still working for Eos and says he still wants to be a stock analyst. “It is what I learned in school,” he said, adding that he believes he is good at it. He won't be able to visit China while conducting his research.

黃昆依然供職於Eos，並表示自己還是想當股票分析師。“我在學校學的就是這個，”並且認爲自己擅長這一行。進行研究期間，他無法前往中國。

China remains a closed society in some ways, too big for foreigners to ignore but with a language few of them can master. Many of the frauds that have come to light in recent years have involved lies that would have been obvious if documents filed with Chinese government agencies had been analyzed by underwriters, auditors and analysts involved with the companies.

在某些方面，中國依然是一個封閉的社會。對外國來說，中國大得無法忽視，但能掌握漢語的外國人卻少之又少。近些年被曝光的欺詐案件中，許多都涉及一些謊言。如果和那些公司有關聯的擔保人、審計人員和分析師事先分析了提交給中國政府機構的文件，這些謊言就會很明顯。

But China has shown more hostility to those who found the frauds than to those who committed them and has been reluctant to share information with investigators for the Securities and Exchange Commission.

但相比於欺詐方，中國對那些發現欺詐行爲的人表現出了更多的敵意，並且一直不願與美國證券交易委員會（Securities and Exchange Commission，簡稱SEC）的調查人員共享信息。

Carnes says seven companies he identified as frauds have been delisted in the United States. The SEC has filed fraud suits regarding three of the companies.

卡恩斯說，七家被他認爲是騙子的公司已在美國上市。SEC已對其中三家公司提起了欺詐訴訟。

It may be that China's government is especially resentful of those Chinese who returned after moving overseas, as Huang did. Early this month, Yu Yingzeng, a Chinese-born U.S. citizen, was convicted, with her husband, Peter Humphrey, of violating Chinese law in investigating a former employee of GlaxoSmithKline at the request of the pharmaceutical company. She was sentenced to two years in prison, the same sentence that Huang received.

或許中國政府是特別痛恨像黃昆這樣移民出去又回來的人。本月初，出生於中國的美國公民虞英和丈夫韓飛龍(Peter Humphrey)在應葛蘭素史克(GlaxoSmithKline)的要求調查該製藥公司的一名前僱員時，被判違反了中國的法律。和黃昆一樣，虞英曾被判處兩年有期徒刑。